Back to News & Field Notes

Operation Swallow: A Tiny Rescue During Renovation

During the renovation of the old parish house in Hrvoji, Park Istra faced a small but important question: what happens when the building you are trying to restore is already someone else’s home?

In the summer of 2014, Park Istra was in the middle of renovating its first building: an old Istrian house that had once served as a parish house.

The place had been empty for around ten years. When people entered it again, they found more than old walls and dust. The building had become home to other forms of life. There were bats, rats, ants, and swallows nesting on one of the beams.

For a renovation team, this could have been seen only as a complication. Work had to continue. The building needed to be repaired. There were plans, deadlines, workers, volunteers, materials, and many things waiting to happen.

But Park Istra was never only about finishing tasks quickly.

The question was not simply, “How do we continue the renovation?” It was also, “How do we continue without destroying the life that is already here?”

The nest on the beam

From the beginning, Petra was worried about the swallow nest.

The young birds were still inside, and the renovation work could not easily continue around them. The hope was that they would grow quickly enough to leave the nest before the work reached that part of the building.

Petra contacted DOPPS, the Slovenian bird conservation organisation, to ask for advice. With their help, she calculated that the young swallows should, in theory, leave the nest in time.

But nature does not always follow human schedules.

The swallows had hatched late. The young birds were still in the nest, hungry and dependent on their parents. The workers could not continue as planned. The building was waiting, but so was a small family.

Petra called DOPPS again. The answer was careful: moving nests usually does not go well. Swallows often abandon a nest after it has been moved.

That made the decision difficult.

Leaving the nest where it was meant stopping or delaying the work. Moving it carried a real risk that the parents might not return. There was no perfect solution, only a fragile attempt to do the least harm.

A careful operation

In the end, they decided to try.

The workers approached the task with great care. The nest was fragile, so they first secured it with adhesive tape. Then they supported it from below with a wooden board. Slowly and delicately, they moved it to another beam, only about a metre away.

It was not a dramatic rescue in the usual sense. There were no machines, no large team, no public event. Just a small nest, a few careful hands, and a decision that the lives inside it mattered.

They called it “Operation Swallow”.

After the nest was moved, the real waiting began.

Would the parent birds return? Would they recognise the nest? Would they continue feeding their young? Or would the attempt fail, as sometimes happens when humans interfere, even with good intentions?

Then came the relief.

The parents returned. The young birds were still being fed. The three hungry mouths continued to call upward, and the adult swallows continued caring for them.

Operation Swallow had worked.

A small moment, a large meaning

On the surface, this is a tiny story.

A nest was moved. Three young birds survived. Renovation work could continue.

But small stories often reveal the deepest values of a place.

Park Istra was created to support local communities, care for nature, preserve heritage, and create meaningful volunteer experiences. Those words can sound big. But values become real in small decisions.

They become real when someone pauses before removing a nest. When a phone call is made to ask for advice. When workers take time to handle something fragile. When the life of birds inside an abandoned building is treated as part of the story, not as an obstacle to it.

The old parish house was being restored for people, but it had also been part of an ecosystem. Bats, insects, birds, plants, dust, stone, wood and weather had all been part of its empty years.

Renovation was not about erasing that completely. It was about bringing human life back while remembering that humans were not the only ones present.

Renovation with attention

Restoring an old building is always a conversation between past and future.

The past is in the walls, beams, roof tiles, stones, traces of former use, and even in the animals that found shelter after people left. The future is in the plans: rooms, kitchens, beds, volunteers, work, meetings, meals, and new life.

The challenge is to connect the two without violence.

Park Istra’s early renovation was full of practical work: removing plaster, repairing walls, preparing floors, working with wood, stone and clay. But this story shows another side of building: attention.

Attention to timing. Attention to advice. Attention to the living beings already present. Attention to the idea that sustainability is not only about materials, but also about attitude.

Ecological building is not only choosing natural materials. It is also asking how our work affects the life around us.

In that sense, Operation Swallow was part of the renovation too.

The joy of seeing them fed

The most beautiful part of the story is not the technical success.

It is the joy afterwards.

Petra wrote about the happiness of seeing the three hungry mouths still being fed by their careful parents. That image stays with the reader: a rough renovation site, an old house in transformation, and above it, a tiny family continuing its life.

It is easy to think that big projects are built only through big actions.

But Park Istra has always been made of smaller gestures too. A meal cooked for others. A path cleared. A wall repaired. A garden cared for. A local person helped. A volunteer welcomed. A nest moved carefully enough that life could continue.

These gestures carry the spirit of the project.

They show that care is not sentimental. It is practical. It asks for time, attention, patience, and sometimes inconvenience.

The swallow family did not know that they had become part of Park Istra’s story. They simply needed to survive.

But for the people renovating the house, they became a reminder.

A sustainable place is not built by ignoring what is fragile.

It is built by noticing it.

A little flight into the future

Petra ended the original field note with a playful line: it was a small step for Park Istra, and a great flight for the swallow family.

That sentence still captures the feeling of the story.

For the project, it was only one moment during a long renovation. But for the swallows, it mattered completely.

This is often how care works. What looks small from the outside can be everything from another point of view.

Operation Swallow reminds us that Park Istra’s work is not only measured in buildings, volunteer hours, projects or numbers. It is also measured in the way decisions are made when something vulnerable is in the way.

The old house in Hrvoji slowly became a home for volunteers.

But before that, for a little longer, it remained home to the swallows too.